Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days.
iPhone 7 Details
The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus might be in the shops and tearing up the sales charts, but more attention inside Apple will now be focusing on the iPhone 7. Given the two-year cadence of the iPhone range, 2016 will be the turn of the external design team to get to grips with the hardware. What can we expect? Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster looks at the clues so far, starting with the death of the home button:
In what would be the most shocking development, Munster states he believes the introduction of 3D Touch will provide the gateway for Apple to do away with the iPhone’s famed home button. He believes Apple will “use the additional space to make the screen bigger or make the device smaller.”Munster also looks at the display, materials, and the all-important battery life.
I suspect of these options, most would prefer the latter with a home-buttonless 4.7-inch iPhone 7 becoming almost as small as the previous 4-inch iPhones for great one handed usability and a 5.5-inch iPhone being roughly the same size as most standard 5-inch smartphones.
Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week’s Apple Loop includes some design details for the iPhone 7, Intel chasing Apple to choose its chips, details on the iOS 9.1 upgrade and the bugs it addresses, the market share of the new mobile operating system, Facebook updates its app, questions over the App Store’s security, and the moments when ‘Hey Siri’ won’t work.
Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days.
iPhone 7 Details
The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus might be in the shops and tearing up the sales charts, but more attention inside Apple will now be focusing on the iPhone 7. Given the two-year cadence of the iPhone range, 2016 will be the turn of the external design team to get to grips with the hardware. What can we expect? Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster looks at the clues so far, starting with the death of the home button:
In what would be the most shocking development, Munster states he believes the introduction of 3D Touch will provide the gateway for Apple to do away with the iPhone’s famed home button. He believes Apple will “use the additional space to make the screen bigger or make the device smaller.”Munster also looks at the display, materials, and the all-important battery life.
I suspect of these options, most would prefer the latter with a home-buttonless 4.7-inch iPhone 7 becoming almost as small as the previous 4-inch iPhones for great one handed usability and a 5.5-inch iPhone being roughly the same size as most standard 5-inch smartphones.
A Little Bit Of Competition Inside The iPhone 7
Intel is hard at work with a thousand strong team of workers looking to place the company’s LTE modem into the next iPhone. Currently Qualcomm has a lock on that supply, but as the A9 chip has shown with Samsung and TSMC both supplying the CPU for the iPhone 6S family, Apple is always happy to introduce competition between its suppliers.
Tim Cook’s team has mastered squeezing as much profit as possible out of the iPhone. The substantial engineering cost to allow two different types of CPU chip to be used will have been a notable investment, but the corporate knowledge gained will be reflected in all of Apple’s products going forward over the next few years. This will easily be a net positive assuming some hardball negotiations across the life of the iPhone 6S and subsequent devices.iOS 9.1 Has A Lot Of Work To Do
Apple has released iOS 9.1, and while the raft of emojis is catching many eyes, iOS 9.1 is turning out to be a rather major bug-fixing exercise. From layout issues and stability in the user interface, to updating apps and better multi-tasking, this fourth update to iOS 9 is doing its best to cure a lot of the problems that users have found on the platform.
Yes iOS 9.1 has a big job on its hands, but it has long been said that the first steps towards fixing problems is recognising you have them. Whether this remains true for iOS 9.1 remains to be seen as (just like iOS 9.0.1 and iOS 9.0.2) initial reports of its success are hit and miss.…and it also closes the PanGu jailbreak for iOS 9.
Of course what both pleases, but also creates doubt, is the speed with which Apple has brought iOS 9.1 to market. With no less than 5 betas and the final release done within 33 days it shatters the typical 60-80 day testing period Apple usually takes…
Is This Latest Upgrade Necessary?
A bigger question is should you upgrade your iOS device to 9.1? The obvious answer (and one that Apple would like you to say) is yes, but take a closer look at the issue there are complications. One already highlighted is the loss of the ability to jailbreak your iPhone - an important consideration for some.
Jailbreaking has become less popular in recent years as iOS has delivered ever more features as standard, but for those wedded to jailbreaking their iPhones the message is clear: stay away from iOS 9.1 until you hear more from PanGu.Hacking aside, what are the headline items in the for and against columns?
The Good News
On the official Apple Support Communities forum the Game Center thread is under universal agreement that iOS 9.1 has fixed the problem. The App installation problems thread is also giving it the thumbs up. Meanwhile comments to the touchscreen glitches thread have cleared up since testing the final iOS 9.1 beta.
The Bad News
It isn’t a clean sweep though. The update has been hit and miss for users affected by broken notifications by improving but not fully fixing the issue, and there is universal derision on the Support Communities thread dedicated to POP email failures with affected users reporting no improvements whatsoever. This despite the fact this is specifically called out in the iOS 9.1 release notes.
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